He didn’t look the least bit perturbed to discover she was watching him, just surprised to find her awake.
She frowned faintly. “Where am I?”
He studied her intently for a moment. Finally, frowning, he focused on drying himself. “You don’t remember?”
She might remember if he wasn’t distracting her with that damned towel, she thought a little irritably. When she managed to drag her gaze from his thoroughly--she was certain--dried genitalia, it was to discover that he’d slanted a glance at her through half closed eyes, his brows drawn together over the bridge of his nose. She blinked as recognition hit her almost as forcefully as a physical blow. “I know you. I remember.”
The frown vanished. His dark brows rose upward, but something flickered in his eyes that looked more like concern than irritation or relief. “Somehow, the way you say it doesn’t comfort me. What do you remember?”
Lena sat up abruptly. “I met you at Morris’. You came there one time.”
He studied her, still with that puzzled, concerned look, slowly balling the towel he held into a tight ball and then tossing it carelessly across the room. “You don’t remember anything after that?”
Lena blinked at him, stunned by the question. “Of course I do!” She thought it over, wondering why he had asked such a strange question. Abruptly, she realized she had been so surprised by the sudden memory that she hadn’t been very clear about what she remembered. “When I was a little girl.”
When he said nothing, she studied him carefully, wondering if she’d been wrong after all. “You’ve changed. Your hair was longer then, lighter than it is now. You seemed so tall.”
“You remember all that?”
She nodded.
“Just like that? I come out of the shower naked and suddenly your memory is jogged?”
She frowned at the sarcasm, watching him as he crossed the cabin and opened a panel in one wall. Pulling a uniform from it, he stepped into the legs, tugged the suit up his hips. He left the upper half of the uniform dangling from his hips, but Lena found him slightly less unnerving half dressed than completely naked. When he turned again, he was adjusting his package.
Lena looked down at her hands, discovering in the process that she was as naked as he had been a moment before. Grasping the sheet, she pulled it up self-consciously and tucked the edges beneath her arms, blushing when she caught his wry glance.
Why was she naked? In his bed? And why did she not remember getting there?
If they’d done what she thought they might have done, she was going to be really pissed off. Because she didn’t remember a damned thing!
Without a word, he stepped to the bunk, picked up a jumpsuit similar to the one he was wearing off the foot and dropped it in her lap.
Lena stared at it a moment and finally shrugged mentally because there hardly seemed any point to worrying about her nakedness when it was obvious she’d been sleeping naked in his bed since she’d come onboard. Moving to the edge, she pushed a foot into first one and then the other of the legs of the jumpsuit, working the snugly clinging fabric upwards.
“It was the way you looked at me,” she said, struggling to sort through the flash of memories that began to flood into her mind.
“Then? Or just now?” he murmured, his gaze moving over her as she stood up to tug the jumpsuit over her hips and then thrust her arms into the sleeves.
When she glanced up at the question, she saw he’d moved to a small basin supported by a pedestal and filled one palm with a foaming substance from one of the taps.
Fascinated, she watched as he covered the lower half of his face with the foam, wiped the excess from his hands, and reached for a hair removal appliance. Working with both hands to hold his skin taut, he began raking the remover slowly over his face.
Thoroughly mesmerized by the process, Lena’s mind just seemed to shut down. It wasn’t until she caught his gaze on her from his reflection in the mirror that she realized she’d completely lost the thread of the conversation.
She couldn’t pick it up again either, couldn’t remember what she’d been talking about before.
Frowning, she looked down at the suit she’d pulled on and studied the closure that went all the way from the neck to her groin absently, trying to figure out how to work it. She didn’t realize he’d moved toward her until he pushed her hands from the closure and pulled the edges together himself.
An electric current seemed to sizzle through her at the light brush of his hands as he worked his way up the closure. Her belly spasmed.
She looked up at his face, wondering if he’d noticed the effect he was having on her. “You’re Morris’ son, aren’t you?” she said, suddenly remembering when they’d come onboard the ship the soldiers had called him Captain Morris and wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her before when she could see now the strong resemblance between father and son.
Instead of answering, he uttered a nonspecific grunt. A distressingly uncomfortable sensation washed over her. She’d been fantasizing about Dax since the first time she’d set eyes on him--or at least the first time she remembered seeing him. Before that--the very first time, when she’d been nothing but a kid, she’d thought he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. She could still remember how awestruck she’d been. Had he been thinking of her all that time as a younger sister? “I guess … that sort of means you’re my brother?”
His head came up abruptly. Gripping her upper arms, he yanked her up on her tiptoes and covered her surprised mouth with his own.
Lena’s heart slammed against her chest wall so hard she almost blacked out from the painful concussion. Heat scoured her as he thrust his tongue into her mouth and explored the exquisitely sensitive inner surfaces of her mouth and tongue with a thoroughness that made it impossible for her even to remember to try to breathe. His taste and scent mingled with her own like a potent liquor, flooding through her veins like liquid fire and draining away every ounce of strength and willpower until she was intoxicated, dizzy, lethargic and her entire body began to tremble with weakness and need.
